Friday, May 06, 2016

What Must Go On Inside a Prime Minister's Mind

Jesus, do you think he's clued in? Do you think Justin has realized with an abrupt shock that, hard as we were on the other guy, we would hold him to a much higher standard?

Justin, for all his failings, isn't the other guy, Harper. He isn't a complete shit. Justin is affable. He's nice. He's damn hard not to like. He and Sophie can certainly bust a few moves. He can do some wicked yoga poses. The man's a veritable street artist. All that stuff is great. The world press eats it up and begs for more. Only that's not what we really expected when we handed him the keys to 24 Sussex (ramshackle as that was).

He has done some good things. Right off the bat he sent his ministers some pretty direct "mandate letters," their marching orders. He told them what he wanted done and now.

He told the hyper-ambitious, Mark Garneau, to raise the drawbridge and lower the portcullis on supertankers plying the north coast. The Northern Gateway pipeline would be no more. That should have been a piece of cake. All he had to do was reinstate the 2008 US/Canada tanker exclusion zone. This one:

Harper rescinded it. Garneau needs to reinstate it. When do we want it? Now! When are we gonna get it? Better ask if, not when.
After those interminable years under Harper's heel we had high expectations for what we thought was going to be a progressive leader. Trudeau wasn't long in bursting that bubble.

His dad, the prime minister who earned everyone's respect even if some of it was given grudgingly, enshrined the rights of the individual against the state while curbing the powers of the state against the individual in the masterful Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Justin has taken a different path - the Surveillance State. Not sure how you reconcile father and son.

Then there's the Saudi arms deal, the shrinking deal that went from $15-billion (back when we were dealing in petro-bucks) to about $12-billion today with the post-bitumen Loonie. The Canadian people don't like that deal. They don't much like Saudis or their brutal ways either. But to Justin, betraying his vaudevillian nature, "the show must go on." Of course Trudeau stayed in the safety of the trenches. When the whistle blew he sent Dion up over the top. Oooh, that was brutal.

Maybe the worst act of betrayal (correct me if I'm wrong) came when the government needlessly backed the Tory motion to condemn the BDS (boycott, divest, sanction) movement to help force Israel to end its generational oppression of the Palestinian people and the wholesale theft of the Palestinian homelands.

...even if we are not enthusiastic about it we have no choice but to recognize that boycott, divestment and sanctions is the only game in town, the last hope for the change that Benn also wants. This is the only means to stop Israel from persisting in its crimes. The only alternative is bloodshed, which no one wants.

In our name, the government of Canada led by Justin Trudeau assisted in the perpetuation of the oppression of the Palestinian people and, in all likelihood, the eventual loss of what little remains of their homeland. Not only is that not progressive, that goes completely beyond the bounds of anything remotely liberal. Oh well, he's in great company. Ask Roseanne. And, he's foursquare with The Donald.

He doesn't get everything wrong. There are some things he simply doesn't get at all. His dumbass remark about how "there have always been forest fires" is a case in point. I don't know who explained that to him but whoever that was forgot to tell him that over the past few decades the extent of forest fires has doubled - DOUBLED - as in twice what it was just a few decades ago. And it's getting, in every all-caps sense of the word, WORSE with each passing decade. And he's just f#@king oblivious to this serious and worsening threat.

Oh, I know. I should cut him some slack. He's a busy beaver working out hazmat pipeline routes to get hazmat dilbit to "tidewater." Because no matter what the Saudis think about the future of fossil energy, the world is craving Canadian bitumen, the highest-carbon/highest cost unconventional oil on the planet. We can safely bet Canada's future on that stuff.

I gotta wrap this up. One more. Okay, I've got it. How about that climate change plan, Justin, the one you said you would deliver within 90-days of taking office? Haven't seen any sign of that. No word on a new deadline either. I suppose there's a reason for that too.

Harper set laughably meagre targets for greenhouse gas emission reductions, really pathetic. Only you're not even going to meet those. You can't come out and say it because everybody would call you on it. This is only the most critical issue to Canada and future generations of Canadians but Cap'n Sunni Ways has bitumen to get to tidewater. Enough said.

I'll let the rest go for now. Only so much a guy can take at one sitting.

3 comments:

The tide is turning. These fake liberal sellouts can no longer get away with the kind of things they used to. They are doomed to wind up on the wrong side of history.

The only thing that can save Junior is if he follows through on his electoral reform initiative. That way he will no longer be beholden to Red Tories. (Under FPTP, he has to split the Red Tory vote to stop the Cons from forming the government on 35% of the vote. Democracies require governments represent 50% of the electorate.)

The disastrous neoliberal era is coming to an end. Justin can ride the tide and perhaps become the greatest prime minister in history. Or he can get drowned by it.

As you have said Mound it's making the Hard decisions where Trudeau falls short. Making the hard decisions like saying no to the Saudi deal and saying no to supporting the Cons. BDS motion(I agree that Trudeau supporting the BDS motion was his biggest betrayal). What a slap in the face to the Palestinians, who are so vulnerable and rely on other countries to stop Israels Palestinian occupation, Land theft and violence and what an unCanadian thing to do. I see the US finger prints all over these decisions.When Trudeau Sr. was interviewed about why he took his trip to Cuba, of which he was villified by the US media, including Canada's right wing media,he said it is very important that Canada have its own independent foreign policy. Keeping lines of communications with Cuba open is part of our foreign policy. When Trudeau ratifies the TPP(I think he will), and Canadians sue him for the TPP being unconstitutional, it will be because of his fathers legacy The Charter of Roghts and Freedoms that we will win. How ironic!